1. MODULE 5.2
FORM & CONTENT
Art 100
Understanding Visual Culture

2. What will happen in
this movie?
How do you know?
http://prezi.com/saze
mrmsx16b/what-
is-a-genre/

3. Advertisers work
hard to create “This is a
romantic
visual messages comedy with
two young
that can be stars.”
decoded in a rapid
glance.

4. Edgar Degas
Edmondo&ThérèseMorbilli
circa 1867
Oil on canvas
45 7/8 x 34 ¾ inches

5. One of these belongs to our
common visual culture, the
other does not.

6. In art history, we often
distinguish between subject
matter and form.
Arnold Genthe, Portrait of Helen Cooke
in a Field of Poppies, 1907

7. Paula Modersohn-Becker
Old Woman with Poppies
1906

8. Georgia O’Keeffe, Oriental Poppies, 1928

9. Claude Monet
Fields of Oats and Poppies, 1890
Oil on canvas, 25 x 36 inches

10. Stuart Franklin (Magnum photo)
Peter Melchett’s
organic farm in
Ringstead, with poppies
and cornflowers
growing alongside
organic wheat
2008

12. What is Formal
Analysis?
 Breaking a work down into
component parts for purposes of
systematic observation and
understanding.
 When the parts are put back
together, you do so with a richer
understanding of each part and how
they fit together.

13. 2 & 3-DIMENSIONAL MEDIA
 Two-dimensional=flat
 Three-dimensional=existing in space
 Sculpture
 Relief (bas-relief)
 Sculpture in the round
 Installation
 Architecture and landscape architecture
 Dimension of time is added
 Film
 Video

14. Drawings
Paintings
Photographs
Prints

15. LINE and COLOR
Are considered the two most basic elements of two-
dimensional art
 Long history of talking about these two
properties
 Disegnoversus colore(in Italy)
 Dessinvs. couleur(in France)

16. LINE
 Line/design can mean
several things:
 (It’s clearer if we use a more
direct translation: design)
 Design could mean:
 A drawing
 A plan to make something

17. Ingres,
Apotheosis of
Homer,
c. 1827,
brush,
gouache, and
gray wash on
paper, Louvre

18. This is both a “drawing” and
a “plan’ for how to make the
work. It comes first.

20. So color was thought to be
secondary.
Except that some artists defied this rule.
They said, actually paint is what paintings are
made of, and paint is pigment (a color)
suspended in a medium (some sort of binder).

21. Jan van derStraet (Dutch, 1523 – 1604) The Painter's Studio

22. Assistant grinding colors for use in a Diego Rivera fresco

23. Pierre Bonnard’s worktable, 1945

24. Magdalenian era, 10,000 BCE, palette and grinding stone

25. So color was thought to be
secondary.
Artists hate rules. As soon as you give them one
they will try to break it.
This academic rule “design has priority; it is the
first thing, and the most important thing”
was closely associated with the city of
Florence.
So the artists of Venice tried to disprove it.

26. Michelangelo,
DoniTondo,
1504

27. Michelangelo Buonarroti, Cumaean
Sibyl, detail, Sistine Ceiling, 1508-12

28. “Flesh was the reason oil painting was
invented.”
—20thc. artist Willem de Kooning
Giorgione, Sleeping Venus, c. 1510

29. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/vefl/hd_vefl.htm#thumbnails
LEARN MORE ABOUT… VENETIAN
PAINTING